The DCFC at 14400 Bear Valley Road in Victorville is about 178 miles from the closest Vegas DCFC at 11330 Southern Highlands Pkwy. That might not work. But the good news is that they are now building a large DCFC station in Baker that should be ready around June:

Baker is at the bottom of the pass. The top of pass is 130 miles from Victorville.

The issue of concern is how much potential energy the 4000 foot climb uses up. If it is more than 90 miles worth of range to reach the top, you will have to do a U-Turn and coast/regen back into Baker. It's a very long grade.

Instead of having to compromise the drive to get max range, I'd be curious to see what kind of driving conditions match or beat the 276 Wh/mi energy consumption of the 217mi EPA Highway range. Probably something around 70mph with light HVAC use.

Also, the big metric for DC fast charging is how many minutes it takes to charge from 0 to 80% SoC using a 125A charger. It'd be great to start a charge cycle as low as you're comfortable and see how long it takes to get to 80%. If you're watching it closely, it'd also be interesting to see at what time/SoC the charge cycle peaks and at what power level.

Those aren't as sexy as a Vegas trip, but they'd help characterize the typical performance of the car.

I crunched the numbers and I think I can make make it to vegas but I agree with you that doing more real world driving and getting those data points would be more useful. Maybe this weekend I will stay around town and collect some data, I live 100 ft from a L3 charger so I can try to get more real time charge data, and also some driving around town 50-100 miles at a time with different conditions.

If my wife is still out of town maybe next next weekend I will try for Vegas!

Would love to see you attempt to drive north to Oregon using the only chargers that seem to be available on I5, 24kw Chargepoint. It was ridiculous that they installed 24kw chargers, I'd love to know exactly how painful it would be to use them. Your LA to SF trip using 50kw chargers seemed painful enough. Seems like every stop was ~40min or so.

I would see about trying to quantify how much extra energy is required when gaining elevation. That is the big question mark, in my opinion, in terms of judging range. When gaining 4000 feet of elevation how much extra power is used on the way up, and how much is recovered coming down the other side.

Bakersfield is actually within Bolt range from my house (barely, it's 237 miles). But it's hard to judge how much extra energy is used going over the grapevine.

It's the same issue on the trip to Las Vegas. It looks doable, but the wild card is how much the mountain ascent eats up. Unlike in an ICE it looks like smart driving could mean the difference between making it or not.

The other thing is how much range you gain by going at 55 mph (basically minimum safe speed) vs 65. It's very possible with charging times that you actually save time by driving slower, since you have to spend less time on the charger.

Worked it out for my trip planner spreadsheet for my Leaf. Should be pretty applicable to the Bolt as well. http://kootenayevfamily.ca/ev-basics/trip-planner-spreadsheet/ Download Rev 4 and go to the "Elevation Energy" tab. Have fun! (Would sure like my Leaf to have longer range, or be able to get a Bolt.)